A California based U.S. Federal Judge has ordered Apple to unveil details of its patent agreement with HTC to its competitor, Samsung.

This happened after Samsung successfully argued that the information was relevant in their dispute with Apple. Samsung requested that the court compel Apple to produce a copy of the settlement and patent cross-licensing agreement it had entered into with HTC. Samsung believed that it covered at least some of the patents in Samsung’s dispute.

Details of the patent sharing agreement however, will only be made available for viewing by the attorneys in the patent lawsuit. Earlier this month, Apple and HTC settled their patent disputes with a 10-year agreement to cross license current and future patents from their portfolios. The exact terms of the settlement between the two companies was kept confidential.

Apple fanboys who take their phones on flights might find that their phone has told airport security all about them.Jobs' Mob is unveiling Passbook, an app which organises e-boarding passes, flight reservations, coupons and other documents.

According to public U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Apple has patentedsomething which it says will allow you to check bags with your cell phone and passing through security by flashing an official driver's license or US passport displayed on your phone. Of course all this will be protected by Apple's bullet proof security which has proved totally accessible to any one with the remotest of hacking skills. But since when did security ever stop Apple from patenting inovation.

The 2008 patent application was approved in July and filed under the working title "iTravel." The system will look after your boarding passes and give your location to the TSA in case you forget to show up for your flight.

While each traveller waits in line, TSA agents would examine the electronic ID at an electronic viewing station. At the X-ray stations, a traveler's phone would confirm to security agents that the traveler's ID had already been checked and the phone photo could be displayed on a screen for comparison with the traveller.

The TSA has not said whether it likes Apple's idea but there are a few problems with the cunning plan. The first is that you would have to prove that the phone was yours. You would still need to carry a passport because they have radio frequency identification chips. And it would have to work with trillions of Government authorities to get the idea approved.

In short, it is not going to happen. But if it does, then Apple will have patented it and can collect cash from who ever manages to push it through.

Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky said that video playback has changed considerably in the past few years, and Windows 8 is designed to support the shifting models. Windows 8?s video decoding for “common media tasks” will be offloaded to a dedicated hardware subsystem to dramatically lower power consumption and improve battery life.

AMD, Nvidia, and Intel have all shipped integrated GPUs with hardware-assisted video decode for a number of years and it is not clear what Microsoft was using as its test chip. It would appear to be something from the Atom range.

The audio engine in Windows 8 buffers a much higher amount of content when in steady playback mode. This allows the CPU to spend up to 100x more time asleep while handling audio, which should translate into significantly improved battery life.

Microsoft is not supporting native .MKV. The Blog said that developers are free to package codecs for standards like FLAC, MKV, and Ogg alongside the apps that use them. This would make codec installation simultaneous with app installation, rather than requiring a separate download.

Microsoft's DRM for it all is called “PlayReady,” and it’s compatible with both streaming services and content downloading. The blog states that “the Media Foundation extensibility model allows for third parties to integrate their custom content protection systems with built-in hardware-accelerated video decoding.

If a service needs to use a custom streaming format or content protection system, it can integrate its own technology without having to compromise on decoding quality or battery runtime.

While it is exciting news that the PC and Mac version of Diablo 3 finally have gotten a solid release date, it seems that many of you really want to know when we can expect the console version of Diablo 3 to arrive for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and maybe even the Wii U. Information about the console version of the game was strangely absent from the Diablo 3 release date announcement.

While we know that Blizzard has been working on (or at least experimenting with) a console version of Diablo 3, the company has been very quiet as to their plans. The official company line is that they have no plans at this time to release a console version of Diablo 3.

The lack of talk about a console version of Diablo 3 likely means they are still working on the release of a console version of the game. Blizzard has hired a number of developers for console positions within the company; and normally would not be seeking out developers with this kind of experience if it were not serious about developing a console title. Based on some of the specific kinds of console developers that they are looking for, we have to think that they are pretty far along in the process of porting the game to consoles.

What we suspect will happen is shortly after the hype for the PC and Mac version of Diablo 3 dies down a little, or maybe at E3, we expect Blizzard to make an announcement that a console version is coming; but we doubt that they will announce a release date till later. Sources tell us that if they are going to release a console version, Blizzard wants it out the door this year. The company continues to maintain silence on this topic, but we expect this to be broken soon.

Nokia has submitted its annual report to the SEC, providing an insight into company's current situation.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that Nokia is still in bad shape - what was once a giant now looks more like Bear Grylls trying to escape.....well, Symbiania would probably be the right country. You may recall that Nokia posted e €1.4 billion loss and its net sales amounted to €38.6 billion. In comparison, the previous year saw Nokia post €1.3 billion profit and €42.4 billion in net sales.

The company shipped 339.8 million phones in 2011, which is 3 percent lower than in 2010 and has been attributed to the competition's aggressive pricing and lack of a dual-SIM handset in 1H 2011. Nokia's smartphones fared even worse at 77.3 million sold, which is as much as 25 percent less than in 2010. Again, this is down to aggressive competition as well as the gradual demise of Symbian.

The report is quite clear that Nokia's future smartphone success will have much to do with Windows Phone. Nokia's current plan is to support Symbian through 2016, but Windows Phone will be the OS of choice for mid-range and high-end handsets.

As we told you Nintendo is planning to release more information on the Wii U a little at a time. Nintendo has confirmed that we should expect a major information drop on the Wii U ahead of E3 this year in June.

The next round of information that is expected will address some of the Wii U’s technical specs that have been leaked by developers. It is now believed that the Wii U use a Quad Core 3GHz PowerPC processor using 45nm process technology. The CPU is said to be very similar to the CPU in the Xbox 360. The unit is said to feature 768MB of RAM that is shared between the CPU and GPU, but the company is also experimenting with a 1GB of RAM version to evaluate performance benefits versus cost. The unit will be powered by an AMD graphics processor, but exactly what features this GPU is going to have is also apparently up in the air.

One new rumor that we continue to hear is that despite their initial claims that the unit would only support one tablet controller per system, apparently the company will offer the ability to connect at least two touch screen controllers to the unit. Developers that we have spoken with in the shadows say that they have also heard this rumor, but nothing has been confirmed to them.

What most continue to agree upon is that Nintendo will have a playable version at E3 and it is still on track for release for the holiday season in 2012. Right now it seems that these are the two things that everyone mostly agrees upon.

Intel has leaked details of its upcoming 7-series motherboards in some of its marketing materials. The boards will be in the shops in March next year.

According to VR-Zone the first one will be the DZ77RE (which is codenamed Road's End) which will be a higher-end model than the current DZ68BC, possibility with Thunderbolt support. It will be cheaper than the DZ77GA (Gaspar) which will come out at the same time. Both models should feature what Intel calls Max-OC, which will make them overclockable.

There will also be a Media series of motherboards. One wll be the DZ77BH (Blue Hills) and this alongside the DZ75SL (Spur Lake). They will have overclocking support. The DZ77BH has dual x8 slots for Crossfire or SLI.

Then there is the DH77SD (Sundale) which is an mATX model with a pair of mini PCIE Express slots. One of them looks like it has a mSATA slot for SSD caching. Then there is the DH77DF (Dry Fork) which is Intel's only mini-ITX consumer 7-series board. It also has a mini PCI Express slot, probably for mSATA support.

The DH77KC (Knoll Creek) which is an ATX board, again with a mini PCI Express slot an mSATA support, just like its mATX sibling the DH77EB (EB lake). The H77 models appear to be shipping with DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort.

There are is also motherboards for the corporate market. Dubbed executive there is the DQ77MK (Moccasin Peak) which is a mATX board with USB 3.0 support and dual Ethernet. There is the thin mini-ITX DQ77KB (Kearnens Bend) which also has USB 3.0. Finally there is the DB75EN (Elkhorn Creek) which is another mATX board with USB 3.0 connectivity.

There are more details surrounding the release of the Forza 4 demo, which is due to be released to Xbox Live subscribers on October 3rd. Apparently, Turn 10 has chosen two race modes for the demo, which are the Quick Race and Rivals modes.

While the Quick Race isn’t really anything new, the Rivals mode really is nothing more than Turn 10’s version of what we have seen Electronic Arts do recently with the Autolog technology in recent racing game releases. In a nutshell, the Rivals mode allows you to race against friends even if they are not online, with the system keeping track of completed challenges and races; this allows players to receive Bounty when you are able to beat opponents.

The demo will include a number of cars. The majority of these cars are the same cars that were seen at the E3 demo in 2011. The demo will include the 1970 Mercury Cougar Eliminator, 2011 Subaru WRX STI and the Ferrari 599 GTO. The demo track is apparently based on the Bernese Alps track, according to Turn 10.

Forza 4 is still slated for release on October 14th for the Xbox 360. The game will be released in both a standard and Limited Edition. If you elect to pre-order the game before release of the game, depending on where you pre-order it (Amazon.com/Best Buy/Game Stop/Microsoft Store/Wal-Mart) you will also get a special bonus unlockable car as a pre-order bonus.